Description

I started this project in [April] last year and I’ve now had a small production run so I thought I had better document it on Hackaday.io.

Me and my daughter were messing around with some acrylic sheet, she wanted a sign of her name that lit up. I thought edge lit acrylic would be ideal as she could scratch out her design her self and then I could edge light it with LEDs. One thing led to another and we soon ended up using some WS2812B strip that I had. Setting it up in her bedroom was a bit untidy due to the Arduino and all the wires. So I thought what would be really great for this kind of thing is a tiny board that was Arduino compatible and could fit in the same profile as the LED strip and even solder directly to it. I eventually came up with the ChromaTab which is basically a miniaturized Pro Mini. I chose to use 1.27 pitch headers and a ATMEGA328p in a 28QFN package.

Details

Based on the Arduino ProMini and built around a ATMEGA329P, the ChromaTab is fully compatible with the Arduino IDE and can be easily updated or customised with new sketches. Sketches can be uploaded via a USB to serial converter. The firmware is based around the Adafruit Neopixel library and so new animations and effects can easily be created.

Measuring just 10mm in width, the ChromaTab can easily fit into the tight spaces you may want to fit lengths of WS2812B strip. The extruded aluminium profiles you can get for mounting LED lighting is one such place you may want to fit these strips with a ChromaTab.

Features

Tiny form factor, just 10mm x 43mm

ATMEGA328p microcontroller

3 Castellated pads for soldering directly onto WS2812B strips

2 Buttons

All Arduino Uno/Mini pins broken out

5v on-board regulator, can be run at down to 5v due to very low dropout